A version of this paper was published by the Moody Media Lab. Graphics by Ben Neary. Dear church leader, Please allow me to introduce myself. I’ve never studied Greek or Hebrew, I’ve never preached a sermon or even taught a youth group, and I’ve never led worship. I’ve never had to make difficult decisions […]

Waters, Brent (2014). Christian Moral Theology in the Emerging Technoculture: From Posthuman Back to Human. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate (260 pages). This piece originally appeared on Marginalia on February 17, 2015. Brent Waters’s Christian Moral Theology in the Emerging Technoculture: From Posthuman to Technoculture extends inquiries pursued over the last fifteen years into the question of what it […]

By imminent decline of contemporary worship music, I do not mean imminent disappearance. Commercial forces have too substantial an interest to permit contemporary worship music to disappear entirely; and human beings are creatures of habit who do not adapt to change quickly. I do not predict, therefore, a disappearance of contemporary worship music, sooner or later. […]

It is not news to anyone that digital media use is a prominent characteristic of 21st century living. It is also not news to anyone that the American church is regrettably quick to fall in line with cultural whims (being all things to all people while remaining in the world but not of it is […]

Last week, Leroy Huizenga (@LHuizenga) sent us a link to an article on the United Methodist Church’s website titled, “Should churches offer Holy Communion online?” The article notes that this is one of the questions that was to be tackled by a group of UM bishops, theologians, and pastors sponsored by the UM Board of […]

Perhaps one of the upsides of iPads and other tablets being incorporated into Christian worship services is that it draws attention to the details of worship services that are often overlooked. For centuries, Christians have taken for granted that a worship service will include some sort of reading or reference from the Bible–in the form […]

This week, Carl R. Trueman from First Things and Charles Hopper at McSweeney’s explore the problems with praise music, expanding on T. David Gordon’s thoughtful article on The Problem with Praise Teams. Gordon focuses on how the phenomenon of the praise band misses the mark of a biblical definition of worship, arguing that the praise […]

There has been a good deal of discussion recently about the Praise Team/Praise Band phenomenon, a phenomenon that has become a liturgical commonplace. Most of that discussion has centered around the practical issues of the expense, the placement of the instruments (front, side, back?), the adjusting of the volume, etc. Many of us regard that […]

He was basically a secular Jew, and I am basically a conservative Christian, but he taught me more than almost any Christian I can think of (C. S. Lewis?). —Dr. T. David Gordon Dr. Gordon’s comment, which appeared in an online post among other recollections of Neil Postman (Rosen, 2003), demonstrates how well the media […]

The article has quite the title: ‘Copyright laws cause problem for Catholic church plans to modernize‘. By ‘modernize’, the journalist means add projection screens to the sanctuary. And the title’s saying that ‘copyright laws’ were what ultimately prevented the parish from projecting the Scriptures on their screens also seems to be a bit superficial, at […]

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